Hard Drive Newness & Performance

[MajorSpud]

I'm currently looking at a couple of very similar drives. 

• http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822178125&cm_re=7mm-_-22-178-125-_-Product
• http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822179109

As you can see, these are similarly priced drives, from the same generation. What I'm really wondering, is if newer hard drives are actually faster than older models. I know that there is supposed to be a correlation between data density and speed, so the number of platters it has could have an effect too. Anyone have experience with this?

 

The only difference I notice is that the newer version has 128mb cache vs. 16mb in the other one.

[ARikozuM]

128MB of cache will let it store more information that it has caught to be read or data to write to the disk. I'd go with the newer one.

 

These are both 1 platter drives, but I haven't been able to find (nor do I have any to break down) the number of read/write heads.

[ARikozuM]

You can also look into "short-stroking" the drive for better performance in games with a 2nd partition being slower for music/movies and such.

[Wolther]

Always go with the newer version if prices are similar. Newer versions will be improved, otherwise I don't see why they would be considered "newer"

[MajorSpud]

Just now, ARikozuM said:

You can also look into "short-stroking" the drive for better performance in games with a 2nd partition being slower for music/movies and such.

I will also have an SSD in this machine, so speed isn't a major concern. I'm mainly just interesting in learning about it. 

[ARikozuM]

Mind listing some of the questions you have?

[MajorSpud]

1 minute ago, Wolther said:

Always go with the newer version if prices are similar. Newer versions will be improved, otherwise I don't see why they would be considered "newer"

I generally go by this too, but I wonder how much of a difference it is over the years. 

[MajorSpud]

2 minutes ago, ARikozuM said:

Mind listing some of the questions you have?

Just wondering if hard drives are still getting faster. I know stuff like the new 10TB helium drives are significantly faster due to the extremely dense data density, for example. Other than that, I haven't heard of any big advancements, outside of theoretical stuff. 

[Wolther]

2 minutes ago, nguinn97 said:

Just wondering if hard drives are still getting faster. I know stuff like the new 10TB helium drives are significantly faster due to the extremely dense data density, for example. Other than that, I haven't heard of any big advancements, outside of theoretical stuff. 

There are a lot of walls (some soft a lot being hard) for speed improvements for hard drives. The main thing that's still going up is density improvements. 

SSDs are the ones improving in speeds (and dropping in price too; which is good) 

[ARikozuM]

2 minutes ago, nguinn97 said:

I generally go by this too, but I wonder how much of a difference it is over the years. 

In this case, it could be quite a bit. The 16MB of cache would limit just how much can be read or written at one time. Imagine if you wanted to transfer a large file to another drive. The 1st one can do so in 16MB chunks, if reading sequentially for maximum throughput, while the 2nd can take 128MB at one time. This is easy to explain if you consider that drives read from tracks and sectors. Imagine the drive going through 256MB on the same track: the 1st drive has to make 16 passes to obtain all the data while the 2nd only needs two. This reduces the up-time for the drive allowing less wear on the components over time.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disk_buffer

 

1 minute ago, nguinn97 said:

Just wondering if hard drives are still getting faster. I know stuff like the new 10TB helium drives are significantly faster due to the extremely dense data density, for example. Other than that, I haven't heard of any big advancements, outside of theoretical stuff. 

Helium is less dense than air, so they're using it to reduce friction and thereby reducing heat inside the drive. The advantage of the helium is also dust-resistance which is one point of failure for HDD's in general.

[MajorSpud]

4 minutes ago, ARikozuM said:

In this case, it could be quite a bit. The 16MB of cache would limit just how much can be read or written at one time. Imagine if you wanted to transfer a large file to another drive. The 1st one can do so in 16MB chunks, if reading sequentially for maximum throughput, while the 2nd can take 128MB at one time. This is easy to explain if you consider that drives read from tracks and sectors. Imagine the drive going through 256MB on the same track: the 1st drive has to make 16 passes to obtain all the data while the 2nd only needs two. This reduces the up-time for the drive allowing less wear on the components over time.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disk_buffer

 

Helium is less dense than air, so they're using it to reduce friction and thereby reducing heat inside the drive. The advantage of the helium is also dust-resistance which is one point of failure for HDD's in general.

How much of a difference would it really be in the real world?

[ARikozuM]

5 minutes ago, nguinn97 said:

How much of a difference would it really be in the real world?

Depends on the file size itself. SATA can only support 32 reqiests at a time so if the drive is looking for 40 files, it's not going to be good. You can see this when transferring tons of photos to another drive as the MB/s tend to wax and wane. 

If the file is large and singular, the extra cache can make a large difference if the drive has to seek another sector or track since there is plenty of data to move while the access time is underway.

[MajorSpud]

20 minutes ago, ARikozuM said:

Depends on the file size itself. SATA can only support 32 reqiests at a time so if the drive is looking for 40 files, it's not going to be good. You can see this when transferring tons of photos to another drive as the MB/s tend to wax and wane. 

If the file is large and singular, the extra cache can make a large difference if the drive has to seek another sector or track since there is plenty of data to move while the access time is underway.

Thanks, I think I learned a lot.